UHURUTO’s Thika Visit: A mixed bag of reactions.

Thousands of Thika residents turned up at the Thika
Sub-County Stadium on Sunday to welcome HE President Uhuru Kenyatta, his deputy
William Ruto and the county’s Jubilee brigade in the final lap of his Kiambu
tour. Some arrived at the venue early in the morning probably to grab the best
spot to follow the proceedings.

The stadium was painted red as Jubilee supporters donned in
their party’s red caps and T-shirts and flapping the Jubilee flags in
anticipation of the great homecoming of their muthamaki. The mood was generally ecstatic.

At around 5:15pm, the president’s entourage arrived into the
stadium amid cheers and jubilation from the crowd. Shortly after, the guests
went straight to the business of the day.

President Uhuru gave out a few title deeds of the 1,700
Kilimambogo residents who have lived in the area as squatters for over 45
years.

Immediately thereafter, the president and his deputy kicked
off their speeches where they appealed to area residents to come out in their
numbers on August 8 and re-elect the duo for a second term in office.

They articulated their achievements as a government in the
past four and a half years and their vision for the next five years if elected
into office. The duo also took a swipe on the NASA brigade who they said lacked
any agenda for Kenya other than to hatch a scheme to plunge this country in chaos as they
did in 2007.

However, their appeal for a 6-piece voting in August divided
the crowd with a section of the people bitterly disagreeing with this plea.

Waving placards and banners that read “UHURUTO sawa OTHERS LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE”, the crowd drowned the leaders’
voices with chants of “Hatutaki suti!”
leading to the deputy president to, at one time, say “Haya basi tumeona. Wekeni hayo mabango chini sasa!”

The division became so evident when Jubilee nominees from
the county were called in to greet the crowd and may be say a word or two. Area
MP Alice Ng’ang’a was forced to cut short her speech in less than a minute
after chants of “Jungle! Jungle! Jungle!”
rent the air, completely disrupting her from addressing her constituents.

Earlier, there was drama as part of the security team
attempted to physically eject Eng. Patrick Wainaina from the presidential
podium, only to retreat after the crowd turned rowdy and attempted to disrupt
the programme.

Calm was restored when former Juja MP Stephen Ndichu talked
to the security men out of the idea of throwing out the independent candidate
and thereafter the then emcee cooling down the tempers of the irate crowd that
had already threatened to get out of control.

Wainaina was forced to take a seat at the back row of the dais
where he sat sandwiched between two heavily built men for the rest of the
session.

Tension was high in the morning hours and early afternoon as
opposing sides faced off in what seemed likely to escalate into full blown
chaos. Majority of the people avoided getting into the stadium for fear of
chaos, opting to watch from the sidelines especially along Kenyatta Highway
near Nakumatt Supermarket and along Stadium Road opposite the Assistant County
Commissioner’s offices.

Early signs of violence revealed themselves when supporters
of one candidate arrived in the morning to find the posters of their preferred
candidate either torn down or those belonging to different candidates pasted on
top of their posters. Out of anger, they struck and started tearing down the
latter’s posters from the stadium walls.

Were it not the intervention of the police, the other team
had started to regroup for a fight but no ugly incident was reported other that
the war of words.

It did not escape our eyes that some of the candidates could
be seen transporting people into the venue via their proxies, probably to give
the impression to the president that they had a big support base on the ground.
Several Thika-Nairobi bound buses were spotted dropping youths around the
stadium and it needed no rocket scientist to identify their financiers as they
loudly came shouting in praise of the preferred candidates.

All in all, everything went on well with no major ugly incident
reported.